Precious Days

One day doesn’t seem like very much time and if we get a lot of good stuff done or we do nothing but watch TV all day it may not seem to make much difference in our world let alone the rest of the world.  Hey, it’s only one day. No big deal. But those single goof-off days can add up quickly and none of us have nearly as many days as we might figure to accomplish what we want, especially if we set our minds on big and lofty goals.

Even if you are only 25 years of age right now, that still gives you just over 27,000 days to age 100.  Now to some people that might seem like a lot of days but to me it’s a pretty small number, therefore I am inclined to think that to waste even one day is a very serious matter, unless of course you don’t have any big and lofty plans and goals.

The good news, however, is that if you are keenly aware of your hours and days as you experience those days of your life then you will be much more likely to not only set good, worthwhile and important goals but you will be many times more likely to reach those goals. And because we all have a limited number of days—whether it’s 10,000 or 27,000—we need to set strict time deadlines for those goals. If we do that, then we are much less likely to waste those precious days and more likely to reach our goals.

When I was only 37, there was an article about me that appeared on the front page of the Sunday Register Star, a newspaper in Rockford, Illinois. The article was titled “He Quit Bragging after his First Million”.  Every once in a while, I re-read the story that they wrote about me and I am always a bit surprised at the mention of my beginnings as a construction worker, 16 years prior, in Rockford. I was making only $4.50 an hour back then but I had already set my sights on becoming a millionaire. 

Even at the young age of 21, I was acutely aware of this thing called “time”. I had figured that even working as hard as I was, making just $4.50 an hour would only bring me a mere $9360 in a year and even after 50 years, I would only have made $468,000. Of course, when I considered that I would have to spend money to live, I quickly figured out that there had to be some formula or secret to becoming a millionaire because just working an hourly job wasn’t going to do it.

I was to find out later, using each precious day to look for the answer, that there was, in fact, a formula to making millions and one that doesn’t require a person to invent Facebook or Amazon or some hi-tech computer program. I’m convinced that if I hadn’t realized how critically important each and every day was and how few days there are in a person’s life, I wouldn’t have spent my early days searching for the right financial formula. The idea of my limited days kept me motivated.

So, please, never forget the great and precious value of a single day in your life and spend it like the precious thing it is.

Getting Serious About Deadlines

While I was making plans for a trip to Kauai recently, I was hit by a pretty powerful thought. I was thinking about how I am really organized and efficient when it comes to traveling. I make lists of items I need to take, the things I have to do before I leave, and the people that I need to meet with, email or call before I go. My trips can be lengthy sometimes, so I know all these things need to be done, without question, and there is always an immovable deadline to meet — my flight out. This kind of deadline pushes me to become an almost perfect picture of efficiency and effectiveness.

In other words, when I am truly motivated, I can plow through dozen of tasks quite quickly and smoothly. The motivation for this when I travel is usually that very fixed and non-movable deadline that I couldn’t easily change without a huge expense and hassle. And so, it’s a deadline I am not willing to miss.

Especially now, still early in the beginning of a new year when setting big goals is still on my mind, I get to thinking about how important this is — having goals with deadlines we are not willing to miss. Deadlines, ones we adhere to, are a huge part of what pushes us to be more effective, more efficient, and ultimately more successful!

Think about that for a moment.  Look at your own habits and behavior when you know you have a flight or other seemingly immovable deadline to meet. Don’t you get done what needs to be done? The great lessons here are:

1. We all need to recognize how very beneficial it is to have deadlines attached to our goals.
2. We need to be serious about setting goals with absolute time deadlines that will drive us to do what needs to be done.

Never forget that you and I only have maybe 700,000 hours to get things done in our lifetime, so it’s important to use our time wisely. If you want to accomplish a lot in your life and do big things for yourself, your family, your friends, and for mankind, you need to be efficient and well-motivated.

So, with your next goals, pretend that your deadline is like a flight you have booked to Paris or Hawaii and if you miss it or have to postpone the flight it will cost you a lot of time and money.  Depending on what your goals are, missing a time deadline may actually be more costly than changing a flight. In the long run, a missed goal could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or even worse if you have a huge loss of confidence or damage your self-esteem. 

The bottom line here is that you should make time deadlines your biggest friend, helper and partner by seeing them as the important, unnegotiable deadlines they really are.

The Best Year Ever

Have you recovered from the holidays yet? If you are like me, probably not.  It sure is a great and special time of the year, just super busy.  But there’s nothing like family, friends, and lots of giving at this time of the year.

So, now that it’s over, most of us have been thinking of this new year and what it is likely to bring. And if you are smart you will plan and set goals so that the new year brings you what you want it to bring, rather than what just might happen to you.

For me, I usually begin my planning by reviewing the past year.  I go through my planner week by week, reading my notes, my do lists, and my activities.  Then I review my goals and see which ones I’ve accomplished and which ones I didn’t.  Yes, that can be a bit of a downer, but it also gives me a gentle kick in the butt and a renewed determination to work harder in the coming year. And if you don’t have a record of your past year’s goals and accomplishments, just write down all the things you can remember and maybe ask your family and friends to help you remember all you did or hoped to do.

Then sit down and write out what you want to do this coming year. I think it is best to remove yourself from all distractions so you can really stay focused on the task of planning your life for the next 12 months.  I love to sequester myself on a long flight where I can’t be interrupted by phone calls, texting, and emails. On a plane, I also don’t get diverted by picking up a book or file or any other stuff like that since I am not at home or in my office where I can see and easily pick up something that takes me away from my planning.

We don’t all have regular travel plans and flights to do that on, but you can go to a coffee shop or a park or a library or whatever eliminates your usual distractions.

Once you have that place and time, look over your review of what you did and didn’t do the previous year, and begin writing down what your goals and objectives are going to be for this year. And don’t undersell yourself. Aim to make it the best year of your life. There’s no reason that it can’t be. It’s all up to you.

Like I’ve said many times before, “I am preaching to myself as I preach this message to you!” So, let’s you and I get to work on this and make 2024 the best year ever!

A Matrix for Your New Years’ Goals

Last week I talked about a book, The Five Best Decisions the Beatles Ever Made. Those decisions will be discussed in the future, but it got me thinking about a lot of the great books I’ve read over the years. One super helpful book that I keep going back to is Super Brain by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi.

In this book, they basically give you the power to accomplish whatever goal or goals you set for yourself. As they put it, the “secret isn’t exerting more willpower or beating yourself up for not being perfect. The secret is changing without force.”

So, what does that mean? It means that to achieve goals and objectives in your life without force you need to create a type of matrix, or set of rules, for making better choices.

Obviously if you are trying to lose weight you wouldn’t set up a matrix that includes things such as:

1.         Eat more meals at fast food places.

2.         Stock more ice cream and donuts in the house.

3.         Watch more T.V.

4.         Drink more beer.

5.         Hang out with unhealthy people.

For your matrix to work with a weight loss objective you would list items that were the opposite of those listed above because you would be better served if the list contained 10 or 12, or even more, positive directions that you would follow that directly support your weight loss goal.

For example, the book Super Brain gives a wonderful matrix for a positive lifestyle:

1.         Have good friends.

2.         Don’t isolate yourself.

3.         Sustain a lifelong companionship with a spouse or partner.

4.         Engage socially in worthwhile projects.

5.         Be close with people who have a good lifestyle–habits are contagious.

6.         Follow a purpose in life.

7.         Leave time for play and relaxation.

8.         Keep up satisfying sexual activity.

9.         Address issues around anger.

10.       Practice stress management.

Another thing the authors wrote that I really liked was that, “Success comes when people act together and failure tends to happen alone.” This has certainly been the case with me and my life with everything from making tons of money to losing weight to being in great shape. I’ve been so blessed to be able to hook up and hang around all the right people who have made it so much easier to start and stick with a particular matrix and reach my goals.

Go ahead and start creating your own matrix for what you want most at this time in your life! It will be a strong start to achieving any goal and is a great way to start out in this New Year.

Analyzing the Beatles

I just finished reading a great little book titled, The Five Best Decisions the Beatles Ever Made, by Bill Stainton. Bill is an excellent writer who outlines and explains the many great circumstances, ideas, and achievements that made the Beatles famous and quite wealthy. That’s right, they weren’t just a great band with great songs. There is a lot going on behind the scenes that helped make them so super successful.

As Bill says, their success wasn’t just luck mixed with their unusual genius. There were actually a lot of conscious decisions made along the way to push them towards their great success. These decisions aren’t something just for musicians and mega superstars. They can help pretty much any business or individual and Bill tells us about them in this book.

Not only that, this book is an easy and entertaining little read, and with so many great things about success and how to put them into practice, I’m sure any one of us can learn them and lift our lives. Or as Bill puts it, have “top of the charts success”.

Now, how is it that Bill Stainton came to write a book about the success of the Beatles? Well, it started with him becoming a fan.

The day Bill became a Beatles fan was February 9th, 1964, and he was only six years old. On that Sunday he joined the 73 million Americans who were watching The Ed Sullivan Show. Bill describes his first impression of the Beatles and what initially impressed him.

I don’t think it was the music –not yet at least. It probably wasn’t the hair although I clearly remember laughing myself silly because it seemed so long (times change, don’t they?) To be honest, I’m not sure what it was that turned me into a Beatles fan that day. They just had something.

I’ve subsequently spent many years analyzing the many “somethings” that made the Beatles what they were. I’ve never grown tired of listening to the music. I’ve never stopped being a fan.

And that’s how it all started for him. Now Bill gives keynote speeches on the Five Best Decisions the Beatles Ever Made for various businesses and industries on top of the many other wonderful and successful things that he is done with his life. Including writing this great little book.

Now, you’re probably wondering what those five decisions are, right? Well, I will talk about that in a future blog post but for now, I want to wish you all a wonderful new year and all the best in 2024.

Find Your Formula

Having a ton of money does not make for a perfect life and I’m pretty sure that most of you would agree with that. Still, a lot of what I have written about in my life is about making big money because there are lots of great things and big benefits that large amounts of money can do for you and those around you. I think my readers here would probably agree with that too. But, if people know how great wealth can be for them, why are most people not wealthy?

I’m pretty darn sure I know the answer to that question and it’s not one of the answers many people might think it would be. Not having wealth isn’t because they …

… don’t have a very high IQ.

… didn’t earn a college degree from a top school.

… didn’t win the lottery.

… didn’t come up with a stunning new invention.

… didn’t get a big inheritance.

So, if those are the reasons why most people aren’t wealthy, then what is it?

Well, there’s actually several reasons, but the biggest factor is a failure to follow or use a proven formula or plan. And believe it or not, that reason is a pretty darn simple one to do. Notice that I didn’t say it was easy to do. Following a formula or plan can take a lot of hard work and it does take time. But once you have a plan, you simply follow it.

Sure, there are a lucky few that make fortunes almost overnight, getting a big inheritance, discovering a new invention, or winning the lottery but those cases are very, very rare and can’t provide most people with a way to wealth. Most fortunes are made over many, many years by following a solid, time-tested, and proven financial formula.

It’s rather sad that so many people still think and dream of the day they are going to suddenly “strike it rich”. That myth is constantly fed by the rare but widely reported occasions when someone does get lucky. Those very exceptional cases are magnified by the media, and it keeps people holding on to “the dream”.

But winning the lottery or inventing the next big thing is not something you can plan for, much less depend on. Planning and finding a formula that works is the only way to make wealth happen for you. There are never any guarantees but if you plan, work hard, and keep at it, you are more than likely going to reach your goal and you’ll certainly be much better off than if you sat around waiting for wealth to find you.

So, don’t just dream about having large amounts of money. Do something about it. I have sure-fire formulas that you can read about in my books like The Next Step to Waking up the Financial Genius Inside You. Find your formula, make a plan, and get on track to improving your life with great wealth.

Reinventing Yourself

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of reinventing yourself. If you’ve done this before, just think back on that great feeling of fulfillment brought about by the process of reinventing yourself. Although it’s not something we do all the time, it can be a huge boost to your life when you do.

Let’s take the physical part of our lives for example. Think about pushing yourself to lose weight and get in great physical shape at age 45, 55, or even 65. Building muscle, staying lean, and gaining flexibility can improve your health to the max. But can it be done?

Sure it can! Is it easy? Of course not. If it was, everyone would do it. But is it worth it? Well, that all depends on you because I’m not saying a super health goal is the only way to go. What goal you have that pushes you to reinvent yourself is up to you. Maybe it’s a whole new career, starting a new company, sailing the South Pacific, or any one of a hundred different things. But whatever you choose, at whatever age, it all can be done and it is so well worth it. And while you reinvent and redefine your life, you will also be reinvigorated, giving so much more life to your, well, life!

Now, reinventing yourself doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and a lot of effort to redesign your life. It takes setting your mind on your goal and the changes you want to make and sticking with it. But, oh, the results you can gain! The results are a life that is so well worth the wait and all the hard work.

Right now, take a few moments to imagine your own ideal life.

• What does it look like?
• How does it feel?
• Who’s there with you to share and enjoy it?
• Where are you going to live?
• How are you going to vacation?
• What are you going to give back to the world? (You have probably noticed that when your give to others it raises your mood and happiness levels so much.)
• How are you really going to make a real difference in your life?

Now, please know this — you can have all that you just imagined, exactly like you visualized, if, for one, you want it bad enough and, secondly, you are willing to make a plan, write it down, and follow the steps that you outline. I can’t pretend that reinventing yourself is easy, but all the best stuff we do for ourselves in life usually comes from hard work which just makes reaching those goals that much more fulfilling.

Finding That Passion for Living

Last week I started telling you the story of my life. I wanted you to see how setting big goals started me off on the path that I am on even today. So here is the rest of my story with a little bit more about what I’ve done and how having big goals that keep me excited and challenged led to much of my success.

For one, I worked on bigger and bigger real estate investment deals. My work in the development side of real estate has been among my most profitable endeavors. I successfully developed large condominium complexes in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. I completed a 13-acre commercial development in the south part of the Salt Lake valley and a very successful condominium project on the beautiful North Shore of Kauai. Although I am less involved in real estate development today, I still have a few projects going with much of the work handed off to my children.

After finding success in real estate, I knew I wanted to something else big and something that could help others find the kind of success I did. So, I eventually developed and successfully ran a real estate investing seminar company that would set the standard for real estate investing seminars, conventions, and educational retreats throughout the world.

I not only became extremely successful in my seminar business and as a real estate investor, but I also got into writing books. I am now the author of four books on real estate investing including the book titled, How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You, which has sold over two million copies. I also published the Financial Freedom Report, a real estate investing magazine, for over 20 years. Then after my so-called retirement, I published another book called, How to IGNITE Your Passion for Living. It wasn’t about real estate but instead I wrote about what keeps us chasing those dreams and those big goals.

You see, after I tried to retire, I felt very lost and depressed. It was then that I realized we human beings need to do more than just have one or two big goals to go after and to succeed at to be happy. We need to have something to work towards, something to keep us challenged and purposeful. So, I wrote that book and started this blog and I keep creating big goals like keeping myself super healthy and active.  

I have also learned to balance my life with my many passions. I love to travel, having visited well over 100 countries. I still love to write which is why I keep this blog going. I also love tennis and getting out to see my friends. All these passions are surpassed only by my devotion to my wonderful wife, Kimberly, and to my children and grandchildren.

So, as you see, I have kept my life full of things that I can work on and challenge myself with as well as enjoy. We need to always have a goal and a purpose and, especially, a passion for living.

Forming Those Big Goals

I’ve been talking a lot about my past in recent posts. I thought maybe you should hear my whole story—maybe shortened a bit—so you understand how my goal setting and persistence has really paid off over the years.

I was born in Portland, Oregon but have lived in quite a few US cities and even overseas. I attended high school for a little over two years in Turkey, then we moved back to the US where I graduated in 1962 from Ames High School in Iowa. Afterwards, I attended Utah State University on a basketball and track scholarship.

This was the time when my big goal setting really started. I went to college, dreaming of eventually being a professional basketball player but after spending most of my time on the bench, I decided I needed a plan B and pursued a Degree in Business, and I really took to it. After I graduated, rather than continue to chase my dream of playing professional basketball, I went on to further my education in business through post-graduate work at De Paul University in Chicago.

My business career began as a stockbroker with Goodbody & Company in 1969. I also worked as a stockbroker for Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis, and for Bosworth Sullivan, the latter for whom I managed an office in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1972 to 1974.

Although I did well those first handful of years in business, I knew I wanted more. I considered a political career for a little while and ran for Utah State Treasurer in 1975. I didn’t manage that, but I had another big goal I was working towards. I had decided that I wanted to be a millionaire.

Now that was a really big goal and one that made people wonder about me a little. But I did my research on how to make it happen and then started purchasing real estate. I bought cheap, dirt bag properties, fixed them up, and began making huge profits selling them in a hot market. In just four short years, I made over a million dollars. I’d reached my goal!

However, I didn’t stop there. But I will stop this post here and wait until next week to tell you what happened in my life after I hit that first big goal. Hint: I didn’t stop making big goals and just kept challenging myself. I encourage you to be the same way. Have big dreams, write them down, and don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done.

Believe in Your Truth

I have had the belief these many years that I was going to live to be very, very old. In fact, I was brash enough, many years ago, to run a full-page ad in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News literally saying that I was going to live to the age of 144.

At best, that goal of mine is questionable, and at worst, it’s ridiculous. But if I choose to believe it, and it drives my life to the point that I take excellent care of myself (while revealing the need to cultivate friendships with a lot of young people), can you find fault in that goal? I don’t think so.

Of course, if I step in front of a bus or die from any cause at all before the year 2088, you can laugh and say, “Yep, he was crazy,” and prove I was wrong. But before, and until, I pass on, you really can’t prove me wrong. And besides, if my so-called “ridiculous goal” drives me to do a number of things I would not have done without it, then I think it was a very good, useful, and beautiful goal.

So, is my true believer mindset aiding my health or hurting it? Well, it comes down to whether I believe that my mind-set can aid my health or hurt it. And I do believe it can help. Now, can you use that mindset and attach it to any goal or lifestyle that you choose? And, if you do, can anyone really prove that doing so is wrong or even just ridiculous?

A belief in something that is true for you doesn’t have to be connected to the ultimate so-called truth that other people believe in. Especially if having that belief helps you live a better life.

The thing is, you and I have the power to decide what we do with our lives as well as what is true for us as individuals. That power allows us to dream and set goals that can bring about the things we want in our lives. In other words, we decide what is true in order to find and support what works for us.

Once you have set your course, don’t let someone else talk you out of your life’s passion because that is your truth and if you let it, it will drive your life and most likely make your life much better and much more satisfying.

I love the plaque on the wall of tennis champion Tracy Austin which reads, “The world will step aside for the person who knows where they are going!” So, decide where you want to go and believe in it.

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